A Dead Horse (#Cassetteboy)

Just to prove how far ahead I am, here's an article I did for The List last year about this week's trending magicians...

And I owned The Parker Tapes long before anyone else. 

The plunderphonic approach to composition – the process of making tracks purely from edited samples – questions the authority of copyright, reconstructs familiar sounds to reveal hidden meanings, and shares an aesthetic with the anarchist appropriation of logos as a form of protest against capitalism.

From Cassetteboy’s first release, The Parker Tapes, this serious tradition was subverted by crude mockery of UK TV celebrities, toilet humour and snatches of absurdist comedy. Latterly, they have become minor YouTube stars, hacking up political speeches – or Sir Alan Sugar’s pompous lectures from The Apprentice – into darkly satirical mash-ups.

The duo remain anonymous, possibly for legal reasons. ‘We don’t use our real names or show our faces. We’ll appear in public but you won’t know who we are, or even if it is really us. We’ve done gigs with other people in the masks.’ And although their mixture of sardonic humour, anarchic fun and bouts of skilled mixology ought to be ideal for the Fringe, they have taken their time. ‘We have wanted to do it for years, but until recently we felt we didn’t have a show that would work,’ they say. ‘But in the last year or so we have developed a disco show: we play pop hits and mash them up with clips off the TV.’

The show includes old ally DJ Rubbish – a UK rapper who enjoys a healthy rant – and Cassetteboy promise ‘something you can laugh and dance and drink at – all at the same time’. Having already pilloried Jamie Oliver, Jeremy Clarkson and ‘taking on the ultimate challenge, making The Crazy Frog worse’, they are ready to go beyond their bursts of two minute mash-up genius to invent the performance art disco comedy show.

Hey Harry Help!

Hey Harry,

I did want to start this conversation slowly: a few general questions about anarchism as a ideology within theatre, the role of performance within activism. You know, abstract stuff that opens up a chat, finds common ground, gives us a framework. Terms of reference, shared assumptions, that kind of thing.

Only, as always, events have caught up with me. I am not the biggest fan of the Conservative party, but I nearly soiled myself when I read David Cameron's thoughts on human rights today. Let's recap his words...

Of course, it’s not just the European Union that needs sorting out – it’s the European Court of Human Rights.
When that charter was written, in the aftermath of the Second World War, it set out the basic rights we should respect.
But since then, interpretations of that charter have led to a whole lot of things that are frankly wrong.
Rulings to stop us deporting suspected terrorists.
The suggestion that you've got to apply the human rights convention even on the battle-fields of Helmand.
And now – they want to give prisoners the vote.
I’m sorry, I just don't agree.

Let's pause there for a moment. Apart from the rather odd tricolon here - he starts with the most frightening thing (terrorists!), and ends on a bathetic note (prisoners getting the vote), I can't quite get my head around Cameron's process here. He seems to be saying the charter of the European Court of Human Rights 'we should respect.' then goes on to say the interpretation are 'frankly wrong.'

I'm sorry, Dave, I just don't agree. If we accept the basic foundation, don't we have to accept its working out through its application? 

I am actually pretty frightened by the thought that Britain might drop our human rights. It's not just the company we'd be keeping (Belarus, Greece during its junta period): it's the idea that a 'British bill of rights' would somehow replace the universal quality of 'human rights.'

So - I am wondering where you'd stand on human rights? I think that they are a fiction, something we made up, but that they represent an ideal - a Platonic Form of social justice that defines us as individual beings of worth - that governments can work towards. They can never be reached, but each attempt makes the world a little better. And a British bill of rights suggests that rights are not universal, but belong to a nation and its citizens. 

And so, other nations, other citizens, can't share those rights. 

I rather hope I am over-reacting. How do you understand this?